Yep, done lots of testing, USB3 especially high bandwidth will cause easily enough noise to jam most GPS receivers.Noise mostly comes from the connectors.
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Any special AM32 configurations did you change? I plan to match MicoAir743v2-AIO-45A with T-Motor Antigravity MN2806 EVO.
Hi @Jai.GAY,
I thought I replied but somehow it didn’t appear. The only changes I made the AM32 are:
- MOTOR_KV = 380 (400 would be correct but AM32’s parms have an issue)
- MOTOR_POLES = 14 (default)
- ESC_INDEX = set each to a unique number 0, 1, 2 or 3
Huibean tells me I should figure out the advanced timing parameter value but I haven’t gotten to that yet.
Another quick update on progress:
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The 3D printed frame continues to cause delays with last months version being a complete failure. I’m hopeful that this month’s new design is finally on the right track with yet another 3D designer and input from our control expert Leonard Hall.
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Custom LEDs for the rear of the vehicle and under the arms are complete and working thanks to the efforts of a PCB designer from upwork.com and manufacturing by pcbway.com
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The custom carrier board is being re-designed to include the Hirose DF56 connector for the Sony IMX415 camera from the Taiwanese company.
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The ESCs (on the custom carrier board) have been “torture tested” by running a modified version of the servo_scan.lua script and while it was tested in a cold location, the temp of the motors and ESCs were always below 50C which should be fine
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The smart battery has moved forward significantly with an actual working prototype. Below is a short video showing how the button works. A short press makes the 8x LEDs light up showing state-of-charge (e.g. 1 LED = 12.5%). A long press turns the battery on/off (e.g. the drone will power up or power down)
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The update for this month is that I successfully flew the new frame design (shown above).
It’s a step back in many ways from what I brought to last year’s conference (e.g. no camera, too heavy, not very pretty) but it’s a step forward in some important aspects:
- Printed using Nylon12 and HP MJF (Multi Jet Fusion). The result is much stronger and has a better finish compared to the Bambu Lab’s Carbon Fibre I was using before. There’s also some scary research on 3D printed carbon fibre. I use JLC3DP to print the frame and the cost is reasonable (approx $300 per frame) and they offer threaded inserts and spray painting (see legs in picture above) which is nice.
- The main body-to-arm connection is much improved using a “bone” and sleeve style design which I’m certain will massively reduce the chance of the arms breaking.
The flight logs shows very low vibration but also that the vehicle is under powered so we have some work to do to remove weight!
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The arms looks nices !
do you intend to make something move stylist for the top frame ?
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Hi @khancyr,
Yes, this square design is just a starting point. Unlike previous attempts, I’m trying to get the basics of the design first before trying to make it beautiful.
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yep, fair point.
2cents , make the landing feet removal ! From having carriedf the previous version, that was very convenient to be able to put the drone on my backpack !
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That is looking great!
Any updates regarding the flying time?
Nice, I would look into making the arms a bit more aerodynamic with regard to downwash, especially making the underside more like airfoil trailing edge.
Any news on BMS?
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Hi @LupusTheCanine,
Txs. Yes, the arms are the next thing to be fixed. They’ll be straightened and lightened significantly and we’re going to test a few different angles to see how horizontal we can make them before vibrations appear.
The BMS has only made a little progress with fixes to the 3D printed case. The next step forward will be fixing a software issue with charging. It seems we can’t charge the battery which is not good :-). It’s just a software issue though.
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Hi @brunoolivieri,
Thanks. Re flight time, the original frame design weighed about 450g and would fly for 30min but this version is a whopping 600g so it’s far too heavy and will be much shorter. There’s a lot of opportunity to make it lighter though so I’m confident we can get it back to 450.
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Thanks.
Is the frame .STL available?
Hi @brunoolivieri,
Thanks for asking, I was expecting this question to come up at the dev conference but it didn’t.
This is intended to be a commercial product so I’m not planning to open source the frame design nor provide the STL files except in a few limited cases (e.g if a core AP dev team member wants them for in order to customise the design, add to gazebo, etc). Maybe I should add that getting this far has been surprisingly expensive (many 10s of thousands of dollars) and I would like to recover these costs.
On the other hand, I’m planning on selling the parts individually on the japandrones.com website so others can buy them easily and put them into their own vehicles if they like. I’m also explaining the details of how the frame is built in the hopes that others will make similar frames.
Of course all the software on the vehicle is open source wherever open source solutions exist including the flight control code (ArduPilot of course), companion computer (Rpandion server or BlueOS), AM32 DroneCAN ESCs, LED control Lua scripts, battery BMS.
A few other unrelated things I didn’t mention in my update above:
- The best way I’ve found to get custom PCBs and frame designs done is to hire engineers on upwork.com and ensure the employment contract includes providing all design files and IP ownership to me. I work with these engineers almost daily giving detailed feedback and treating them just like engineers working at my company. Outsourcing designs to external companies has never worked for me and has only resulted in delays and restrictions on IP or manufacturing.
- I used Claude with AutoDesk Fusion to design the simple legs under the vehicle. I think this is going to make it much easier for anyone to make good 3D designs
Thanks!
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Hi @rmackay9 !
Thank you for the detailed points. I was actually just about to ask you about the PCBs next.
I’m currently raising funds to start a similar little project with my students, but focusing on something smaller or simpler. Maybe the thousandth Phantom clone, but almost entirely homebuilt.
I hope you get a good return on your investment; I’m rooting for you and keeping up with your progress.
k/r
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“Yes, this square design is just a starting point.” Good.
I been working with structural webs lately with LWPLA and carbon fiber rods.
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Not sure if this type of webs will help you but here is a sample for my tail sitter. BTW I picked up a K2 plus printer, and it is really nice.
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The latest update on the project is that I test flew the custom camera that fits within the CADDX GM3 or XFRobot C20-T camera gimbals. It was a quick flight and I’m sure the image quality can be improved but it was nice to at least get it in the air.
I’ve created a separate blog post about it here with more details.
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